Winter Rabbit Colony

yee hi it's youtube tuesday this is gene with caj farm we're a medicinal urban organic egg farm right here in beautiful matthews county virginia i'm back here with the animals and uh we are just a muddy mess here in virginia along the east coast we have had so much more rain than usual but we're trying to keep our spirits up this is our rabbit colony that i haven't really videoed a whole lot we chose to do the rabbits this way and we and they seem like they are just thriving ca made them this pallet hotel here and um so they can get up underneath there and we keep piling straw all around it needs to be re-piled again but they and then he cut these trash cans in half and they love those but you can see we probably have about 20 we started with about eight uh they keep multiplying but um ca sunk the wire all around this this enclosure like two to three feet down around to keep them in but occasionally one does burrow out and um they're leaving they're living while back here we they don't like to be picked up they will let you touch them sometimes and we bring lettuce back here and they love that they love to come eat the lettuce from visitors to the farm but they don't like to be picked up a strange thing about a rabbit they will like jump and and pull and twist so much trying to escape if you try to pick them up that they actually hurt themselves they can they can actually dislocate their their backs and and and you know and have to be you know humanely you know euthanized um so we do not try picking them up i really try to avoid that um unless one of them's hurt and then we're just extremely careful i think the way to do it is you you pick them up and keep them tight close to you as quick as you can before they have a chance to to jump a lot but you can see they are just running around and visitors can sit on these little stools and the rabbits will come up to them and eat eat lettuce or carrots that we they pull from the garden but they're just living free back here this is called a rabbit colony it's an alternative to being in cages and they just love it and they burrow down in the ground one thing though lately it's been so rainy that their burrows have been have been flooding so if there's any babies down deep in the burrows then the babies have been dying during all this rain and stuff we made these we put boards on the bottom underneath these two and put fresh straw in there and so the rabbit's been going in there when their burrows get flooded to get out of the rain there or the or the the pallet hotel they seem like they're doing really good like i said everything is a big mess back here because of the rain and um the only only animals that like it is the ducks they seem like they like it a lot in here we put their timothy hay and you know that rabbits actually need more timothy hay than they do feed we give them a lot of feed and fresh water but they really don't don't need that a whole lot they mostly need the timothy hay but they have this little house here to get out of the weather and uh this actually was going to be the new duck house and then we got hold of these rabbits and and uh and made it the rabbit area so we still need to build a new duck area because they really need a new a new area occasionally the rabbits will burrow out and um and i'm afraid this whole enclosure is totally surrounded by the dogs our three great white pirates see see bear and moon sitting down there watching and um if they dig out usually one of the dogs will get them and and they do eat them but that's just a way of life we do our best to keep them in here but but if they do occasionally find a way out you know like i said that's just the way of nature anyway stop on by the farm sometime this you know later this winter or this spring we're open year-round you can stop in and visit visit the rabbits and the dogs and and just enjoy the farm enjoy the changing seasons and you'll see us in various forms of work um we are not a fancy farm we're a working farm we're a medicinal herb an organic egg farm and you know we've got a whole lot of chickens we keep everything open everybody's pretty much living outside on their own they go in when they want we do everything the old-fashioned way we're a off-grid solar farm and we like to do everything the natural old-fashioned way anyway the rabbits are just waiting for you to visit so stop by sometime anyway i hope your first week of january is going well and i'll see you next week

Channel: Grow With US!

Views: 9,702

Keywords: Rabbit Colony, medicinal herb farm

Id: UFg1B2t6lDM

Length: 4min 34sec (274 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021